Australia’s leading Anglo-Celtic advocacy group has spoken out against the renaming of the electorate of Franklin in Tasmania to Tongerlongeter – an aboriginal war leader who massacred women and children.
The Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) announced the renaming proposal on Wednesday, and said that although the electorate had been named after explorer Sir John Franklin for 120 years, the change would “honour” Tongerlongeter and his “prominent role in aboriginal resistance to colonial expansion”.
Tongerlongeter was responsible for numerous attacks on colonial settlements during the Black War of the 1820s and 30s, and possibly personally led two separate attacks in 1828 where two White women, two little girls and a young boy were speared and clubbed to death.
The president of the British Australian Community (BAC), Harry Richardson, said on Sunday that his group, which represents Australians of British descent, opposed the renaming, and considered it an “unnecessary and hostile erasure of Australia’s Anglo-Celtic foundations”.
“While many aboriginal names for natural landmarks and features were acknowledged and respected by settlers, it is now exclusively Anglo-Celtic and European names that are being targeted for removal,” Mr Richardson said.
“These changes sever our connection to country and the past, and disrespect the legacy of the largely Anglo-Celtic pioneers who built this nation – establishing towns, cities, administrative regions, port, parks, and roads that that stood for generations.
“The electorate of Franklin simply did not exist prior to the arrival of the British. Representative democracy was entirely unknown to the aboriginal people for the thousands of years that they lived on this continent.”
Mr Richardson said the BAC objected to the renaming because 24 out of 150 federal electorates already have indigenous names, and due to Tongerlongeter’s actions during the Black War, where women and children were brutally murdered in attacks carried out by his group.
“There is already more than adequate representation of aboriginal heritage in our electorate naming. Erasure of yet another Anglo-Celtic name is entirely unjustified,” he said.
“While Tongerlongeter may deserve his place in the history of the conflict, naming a federal electorate after him is disrespectful to the victims and the remainder of the estimated around 200 White settlers who died as a result of the violence between aboriginals and settlers in Tasmania during the course of this conflict.
“It also strikes us as inappropriate to name an electorate after a man who led a violent and even murderous campaign against the people who brought formal representative democracy to this continent for the first time ever.”
The AEC gave the public until 11.59pm on Tuesday to make submissions on the proposal, and a final determination will then be made.
Header image: Left, A watercolour painting of Tongerlongeter (Thomas Bock, 1832 – British Museum). Right, A portrait of Sir John Franklin (Thomas Phillips, public domain).
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